Daniel Solomon, IEM ’17

CIEE office of Intercultural Learning, Santiago, Chile

My Fall 2017 semester was spent living in Valparaíso, Chile, completing my IEM Practicum under the supervision of CIEE’s Academic Director of Intercultural Learning and working out of CIEE’s Valparaíso Study Center. Initially, I wasn’t thinking of completing an international practicum, but this was too good of an opportunity to work for a respected program provider, continue to develop my own intercultural competence, and continue to improve my Spanish language ability which I had started at MIIS with SILP.

My work with CIEE included five projects benefitting the office of Intercultural Learning or the network of facilitators and instructors of CIEE intercultural initiatives, and ultimately the students, at CIEE study centers worldwide. What stands out to me the most, after completing all of my project work, is how collecting and analyzing data became the foundation for all of my projects. Collecting and analyzing Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) results and Intercultural Communication & Leadership (ICL) course evaluations for the Academic Affairs Outcomes Report was my first project simply because it was the most immediate need for the office. As it turns out, that process gave me the data I needed to work on everything else. The outcomes report is designed for CIEE’s Executive Team, so in order to report the information to our internal community of intercultural facilitators I created a newsletter. The other projects, from redesigning trainings to competitor analysis, came about in part from what the data was telling us about the effectiveness of intercultural initiatives within the organizations in diverse regions and class environments. It’s a good lesson that listening to the data, whether it is qualitative or quantitative, is an important step in the design process.

“Students from the CIEE Valparaíso study center, and IEM practicum student Daniel Solomon, on a cultural site visit to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile. Estudiantes del centro de estudios de CIEE en Valparaíso, y estudiante de IEM practica Daniel Solomon, en una visita cultural en sitio al Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos en Santiago de Chile.”

In addition to project work, this was an independent study in intercultural and linguistic development. I had the opportunity to work in an office every day with Chileans and live with a host family. My host mom did not speak English, so every day I would come home from work and have dinner with her, becoming more and more comfortable communicating in Spanish. I noticed my development more with my coworkers, who I had such a hard time understanding in the beginning, but I could sense the increase in my listening comprehension as time went by. I could have completed my practicum in Portland, Maine which is where CIEE is headquartered, and I could have chosen to live in a hostel in Valparaíso, but in order to continue learning a language, and to really begin to understand a new culture, one must take advantage of the opportunity to surround yourself and interact with locals. It is through that interaction and communication that learning happens.

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